


Thirteen O'Clock

by Ellynne



Category: Doctor Who, Once Upon A Time - Fandom, Sarah Jane Adventures
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-06
Updated: 2017-04-06
Packaged: 2018-10-15 07:09:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10552158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ellynne/pseuds/Ellynne
Summary: The Doctor takes Sarah Jane to a small town in Maine that shouldn't exist and is trapped in in time, a town where everyone mistakes the Doctor for the mysterious, missing Mr. Gold.In memory of Elisabeth Sladen, the original Sarah Jane.





	1. You Shall Go to the Ball

**Author's Note:**

> I think I started writing this just after the first season, then put it aside. I was reminded of it recently and decided to post the beginning and end. The middle chapter is a general summary of the part I could never quite make work.
> 
> This was written before the 13th Doctor. Obviously, AU since then.

**Note: This story is now AU after The Time of the Doctor. The story grew out of reading reports that Robert Carlyle was once considered to play the Doctor. It's also sort of a tribute to Sarah Jane Smith and Elisabeth Sladen. I started it a while back. The ending is also finished. It was the middle I had trouble writing. So, I can't promise closure. But I thought posting it would help me deal with my current Rumplestiltskin withdrawal symptoms.**

A girl should have some standards.

Sarah Jane understood that intrinsically. She certainly understood it better than many of the young girls she saw these days (when, she asked herself, had she become a person who could – and  _would_  – use phrases like "young girls these days"?). She remembered when people were still shocked that a woman might be  _serious_  about her education and her career. She'd been there in the early days when women had to fight to get into the professions they'd wanted – and, once in, had to fight to do the jobs they'd signed up for and not fetch coffee and sandwiches.

At the same time, you had to know where to draw the line. Some things were honest drudge work, the same awful jobs everyone low on the totem pole would be expected to get through. Refuse to do them, and you weren't paying your dues. They came with the territory.

Some didn't.

It was important to know the difference.

The same, general principles applied in private life, too. Know where you stood – and where you wanted to stand.

So, a girl needed standards, rules to serve as wake up calls, to tell her when she was getting too near the lines she didn't want crossed.

She'd never really been able to hold onto those lines with the Doctor.

He walked in and out of her life for years – once vanishing for the better part of two decades (two decades of her own time, centuries for him). She told herself again and again she was over him, she was moving on with her life.

And she did. In a way.

And, then, he showed up again.

Like today.

His face had changed (again). This time, he was a small, slight man with brown hair that hung to his shoulders and dark eyes. For some reason, he had picked up a Scottish accent – he'd tried to explain once how those shifts in speech worked, but she suspected it was one of those things that just didn't make sense to people who stayed in the same body all their lives.

And he'd decided to walk with a cane, affecting a small limp.

"Don't tell me you've finally managed a war wound," she said when she saw it. "I won't believe it."

He'd grinned at her – the same conspiratorial grin he always had right before they found themselves knee deep in trouble and running for their lives. He also twirled the cane and executed a tricky dance step just to show he didn't need it, then said, "Come and see. You won't believe what happened this time."

Famous last words.

But –

"Doctor, there's my son, Luke, and my daughter, Sky –" Her adopted, only slightly alien children – one of those stories that seemed to happen around the Doctor.

"Oh, no worries about that, Sarah. We'll be back in plenty of time. I have the Tardis, remember? A time machine?"

And, no matter how many times the Doctor wound up on the wrong side of the galaxy or in the wrong century, she still let arguments like that persuade her.

X

"The town of Storybrooke, Maine," the Doctor told her, now using the cane as they walked down the street. "A quiet, out of the way hamlet in a rather chilly state prone to large mosquito infestations—by that, I mean both the size of the infestations and the size of the mosquitoes. Also –"

A young woman with red streaks in her dark hair stopped in front of them, frozen like a deer in the headlights. "Mr. Gold,” she stuttered. “My grandmother has the rent money, it's just that –"

The Doctor turned cold and officious. "Yes, yes, dear, your grandmother can tell me whatever she needs to when I see her. But, right now, I have other business –  _that I do not want interrupted_."

The young woman seemed to notice Sarah for the first time. "Of course, Mr. Gold, I'm sorry, I –"

"Of course, you are.  Tell your grandmother I'll be seeing her. Later."

The young woman scurried off.

The cold façade dropped, and the Doctor grinned like a school boy. "– a town where everybody seems to know me – even though I don't know them."

He led Sarah to a house that might have been a gothic mansion if gothic mansions came in pink. "Mr. Gold's little cottage," he told her as they went up the front steps. "The richest, most merciless man in town, owns everything – and possibly everyone." He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and unlocked it.

Sarah gasped when she saw the inside. In her work as a journalist, she'd interviewed kings and queens (not all of them on this planet, thanks to the Doctor). She'd spoken to artists and people who ran some of the most famous museums in the world. There were several things here that, if they'd been real, could have had the Victoria and Albert Museum ready to fight to the death with the Louvre to get possession of them. Even imitations of this quality had to be worth a fortune.

"They aren't imitations," the Doctor said. "Everything you see here is real."

"What? That can't be possible. Doctor, that's a – that's a Leonardo sketch over there. And that figurine? It  _has_  to be a copy. That's a lost piece of Michelangelo's. I recognize it from that time in Italy." She'd written an article on it, too, "Lost Treasures of the Renaissance." After all, if a reporter met Michelangelo, she should find some way to use it, even if she had to leave out the personal quotes.

"It's real, and so is the Mona Lisa in the guest bedroom upstairs – not that that's so shocking. He made several. It was an alien who'd commissioned them, though I'd thought most of them had been destroyed when he failed to destroy the Earth – the alien, not Leonardo – the paintings were part of the plan – not to worry, they're perfectly safe, now. You're welcome to use the guest room, if you'd like. Or one of the others if you don't like the painting. It would give me the creeps, trying to sleep with someone like that looking down at me, that strange smile on her face –"

"And what's this Mr. Gold going to say when he comes home and finds me in his guest room?"

"Nothing at all. That's the point. He's gone missing."

"And . . . ?"

"And?" he said. "Why does there need to be more? A missing man, a mystery to uncover –"

"A man who looks like you but who lives in a corner of this planet you could have overlooked for centuries, a man who has sketches by da Vinci and statues by Michelangelo in his parlor."

That eager, schoolboy grin was back. "I know! Isn't it  _marvelous?_  And there's more. Upstairs, in the reading room, there are books from Atlantis and scrolls from the library of Alexandria. And some of the other things here –"

"Yes, Doctor, I'm sure it's all wonderful. But what does it mean? Or –" she added quickly before he could give her a lecture on voicing conclusions before you had all the facts, "– what do  _you_  think it means?"

"Ah. Well." The Doctor plopped down in an antique winged chair. "On the face of it, the evidence suggests something very unlikely. Alexandrian manuscripts? You don't just find those lying around – they're the real thing. I saw my notes scribbled in the margin. A good share of the treasures here, like the extra Mona Lisa, were all believed lost or destroyed ages ago. The logical conclusion is that Mr. Gold has some way of getting hold of them right before they were destroyed."

"A time traveler?" Sarah said. "A time traveler who looks like you?"

"Interesting, isn't it? Especially since he's nothing like me. And he only has one heart, if the files I filched from the local hospital are to be believed – he had his last physical just before he went missing. And, then, there's this town."

Sarah glanced at the window, not that she could see anything. The burgundy drapes were pulled aside but only to reveal gauzy, white curtains beneath. "What about this town?"

"Well, first, the fact that it shouldn't exist here. Always interesting when that happens, don't you think? And, second, although the town  _does_  exist, time doesn't, not in its borders – which, by the way, no one belonging to the town can leave. Yet, Mr. Gold isn't here. A bit odd, wouldn't you say?"

"That depends. Are you going to explain what you just said?"

"Sarah –"

"I promise to applaud how clever you are once you've done it. I just don't want to wait till something's trying to eat me before you explain that's what you were hinting about hours earlier. "

"You're taking all the fun out of this."

"Sorry, Doctor. I seem to be turning into a cranky, old woman with no patience whatsoever. Now, could you explain?"

"Oh, all right. The town of Storybrooke, Maine is listed on all the maps and histories it should be. It has its own little Wikipedia entry and everything. There's a map at the Historical Society of Maine from the Revolutionary War showing local skirmishes fought around it. You'll find it properly written up along with other settlements in original documents from when the people of Maine were having to prove their land claims in Massachusetts' courts. Any record you can check from any period shows exactly what you would expect to find to prove the town and its people were exactly where they were supposed to be doing exactly what they should have been doing. No historian in his right mind would question it.

"Of course, none of those historians have a time machine.

"This town didn't exist twenty-eight years ago. As near as I can tell, it–and its history–just blossomed into being one night and it's been here ever since.

"And that history keeps updating itself. If you were able to go and check the federal tax records for the people here the day they were actually first filed in 1984 – I'm not sure what George Orwell knew about it, but that is the year the townspeople first filed them – they're all the same ages as they are in 2011. But, if you checked those same documents from 1984 in 2011, you'd find they'd somehow changed since they were first filed, different names, where necessary, and different dates of birth."

"Aliens?" Sarah guessed.

"If they are, they've worked a bit harder at it than most to blend in. They're all human, right down to their DNA.

"Or the ones I checked were. I'm not sure about some of the others.

"Besides, whatever convinced this world they'd always been here seems to have convinced them, too. No one in this town has changed. There's a young woman who works at the local diner who has been within two weeks of giving birth for nearly three decades. As far as I can tell, with minor variations, they relive the same year over and over again. There hasn't been a birth or a death here in all that time.

"Also,  _no one_  has moved out of the town – or even left it – since it appeared. And no one moves in. I cheated a bit to get here. I moved the Tardis to where the town would be twenty-nine years ago, then I moved it forward. If I'd tried a more direct route, I would have just found myself in the Antares Nebula or maybe Portland. Nowhere interesting, at any rate.

"When people  _do_  try to leave, bad things happen. I've been able to verify another young woman – the one we met on the way here – who put a down payment on an apartment in Boston. She had to cancel when her grandmother had a heart attack. A teen, who had a sports scholarship to college, had an accident and had to have leg surgery instead. A man who's been working on a boat to sail around the world suffers hull breeches with clockwork regularity.

"Interestingly enough, there's also a record of a man who left his wife five years ago and hasn't been seen since – but he was on record as having left her five years ago when the town first appeared and has been missing for five years ever since, so I'm not sure we can count him. Although, there's also been a John Doe listed as being in a coma for five years in the hospital for twenty-eight years, so there may be a blatantly obvious connection – which no one here has noticed.

"At any rate, since we snuck in here and may be under the same rules, try not to go outside the town borders unless you really have to.

"Although there has been an exception to the no-one-comes-here rules – besides us, I mean. It seems the mayor, one Regina Mills, adopted a boy from outside the town ten years ago. He's the only person who's been aging normally since then. A good thing, too. Can you imagine ten years in nappies?"

Sarah filed the information away but didn't comment – no point in encouraging him in side issues. "So, this Mr. Gold looks like you and is part of a town that has been manipulated in time – something only a time traveler could see through. Is he a time traveler? Is he a Time Lord? There aren't many of your lot lying around these days."

"No," the Doctor said soberly. "There aren't."

"In fact, the only one I can think of – and you know he'd get a kick out of looking like you – would be the Master."

"Yes, there's him. And it almost fits. Except . . . this Mr. Gold really doesn't seem like him. By all reports, he's rather ruthless in collecting rents – he owns most of the town – but he's not really homicidal or power crazy. If the Master were here, I'd expect him to be running things. But, the person in charge is Mayor Mills – Gold's not even a power behind the throne. Nor is he dating her or seeing her on the sly – that's the sheriff's job. It's completely her show.

"Besides," he looked around the parlor. "The interior design here just isn't the Master's style."

"A king's ransom in treasures isn't his style?"

"A king's ransom in treasures he  _never shows anyone_  isn't his style. It's one of his immature quirks. He can't just  _do_  something, he has to make sure there's an audience to appreciate it."

_Said the pot to the kettle,_ Sarah thought.

The Doctor went on. "He's never really cared about Earth art you know. The only point in having things like this would be to make sure everybody else knows.

"No, you and I need to go into town and see what we can find out. Or, rather,  _you_  need to find out. People won't talk to me. As far as they know, I'm Mr. Gold, and you've already seen how conversations with him don't get far beyond, 'I already paid the rent!' And that's only the people who haven't already run the other way when they see me coming."

"Oh. But, if no one ever visits, how do I explain being here?"

"Well, I might have exaggerated when I said  _no one_  visits. They get mail and delivery trucks, things like that. I think people have even been known to stop for gas and directions – although there's a diner just outside of town that's a much better place to stop for either.  _You_  are here because you are a journalist I contacted about some antiquities I was researching – as you said yourself, you've written some interesting articles on lost antiquities—”

“You mean when I said you were ancient and lost?”

“Same difference. Mr. Gold does have unusual and extensive contacts. Between one thing and another, I decided it would be easier to get the job done if I had  _you_  on site for a few days.

"Which reminds me, make sure to tell people I coerced you and that you'll be overjoyed if you never have to deal with me again when this is over – unless it involves sticking sharp objects in sensitive parts of my anatomy. Although, go easy on anything like that. I have a feeling the local sheriff might overreact if he hears someone making threats. The man has almost nothing to do except drive around and lock up the town drunk. Besides visiting the mayor, I mean."

Which was how Sarah wound up at the local diner, Granny's.

X

The doctor went to Gold's shop.

Pawn shops were supposed to have a seedier, desperate feeling to them, he thought. The debris of desperate souls, sold for drink or a last ditch effort to keep food on the table. They had stolen goods or the bits of junk no one else would take.

Or, sometimes, just that old camera you didn't need now you had the new model and why should you just throw the thing away?

But, they didn't feel like Aladdin's cave, a magic place of wondrous treasures – whose owners would pay a pretty penny to get them back if they only knew where to look.

Yes, he thought, that was the difference between this and a normal pawn shop. Pawn shops were full of things that had been sold; this shop was full of things waiting to be bought – or reclaimed.

Many of them were beautiful. Some were strangely terrifying—what was it about that leather ball that disturbed him so? All of them begged to be studied and wondered at.

He looked over the paintings covering one wall. No portraits. They were all landscapes. The Doctor frowned. He'd seen a great deal of Earth – and several other worlds. He didn't recognize any of the places shown here . . . .

Fine china, musical instruments, boats and bicycles, some of the creepiest puppets he had ever seen – who had carved them like that? Their faces frozen in terror? Those should have been ugly. Yet, even those seemed more wondrous than horrible.

He found a chess set of gold, like the one the surviving Aesir were supposed to find after Ragnarok, the destruction of the world. The old playthings of the gods, proof of the past they had forgotten, that they would study in wonder . . . .

He was looking at them, he realized, studying them in wonder.

But, it was a mobile of glass unicorns made for a child's crib and the leather ball that captured his attention. He wasn't sure why.

The humans in this time and place were overly protective, he sometimes thought, afraid to let children face the slightest risks – of course, the Doctor's people had thought nothing of tossing their children in front of the time vortex and seeing who walked away sane and who didn't, so perhaps he shouldn't judge – but a  _glass_  mobile – for an infant – it didn't really fit this land.

Neither did the ball.

It was a kind that hadn't been made for decades, leather hand cut and hand stitched. It had a feeling of great age, too, he thought. Not something a human would be likely to sense. It wasn't old or cracked – in fact, if he went by its looks, it might have been made only a few months ago. A young boy could have been kicking it down a dirt street just yesterday.

But, he was a Time Lord. He felt the age on it.

It had been made centuries ago.

He thought of his granddaughter, Susan, another face lost in the folds of time. An elfin child with dark hair and dark eyes . . . .

Her features twisted in his memory as he held the ball, became the earnest face of a young boy.

He remembered hearing Susan speaking of their homeworld, of Gallifrey, to one of the companions who had traveled with them. The beautiful world that was lost to them. But someday, Susan had said, someday they would return . . . .

Susan had never seen that day. He remembered taking her and fleeing before her own coming of age before the vortex. It was like an Ogre, he thought, devouring the children the Time Lords sent to it – or, worse, returning them broken and shattered, like the veterans of a terrible war, crippling them, the childhood burned from their eyes.

He could not sacrifice Susan to that.

And, if saving her meant breaking all the laws of his people or being willing to take them all on like some mad hero out of a storybook, fighting armed soldiers with nothing but a knife in his hand, that was what he would do.

A metaphorical knife.

Because he was the Doctor.  He didn’t use guns or knives.

Did he?

Not that he was sure what the knife was a metaphor for. He seemed to have gotten a little tangled up in that one.

Although armed soldiers who had him outnumbered and surrounded seemed to pretty much summarize most of his dealings with his people.

And most other people, come to think of it.

Never mind. The only way to protect Susan had been leaving their world for another – any other, no matter how dangerous – and it wasn't as if he would ever have let her go alone.

The image of the boy rose up again, a boy so like Susan, dark hair and eyes, fair skin, falling through the vortex, screaming out to him as he let the child go.

All right, there was something seriously disturbing about this place.

The bell on the door rang as a customer came in.

No, not a customer. It was the smiling, serpentine mayor.

Really serpentine. He'd known carnivorous reptiles that ate their own young who were absolutely cuddly compared to her.

"Mr. Gold, you opened up a little late today."

Not much for small talk, was she? "It is my shop, dear. I can keep the hours I like. Besides, I had a bit of business to conduct elsewhere."

"Oh, yes, that charming friend of yours. Who is she, Mr. Gold? We so rarely seem to get visitors to our town."

"Her name's Sarah Jane Smith. She's a journalist. I'd read some articles of hers on antiquities and thought she might be able to help me with some research on items I've collected. Unfortunately, there's only so much you can do electronically, even these days. I had to force her to come to make the examinations." He let some of the venom he was feeling for Regina spill over as he spoke of Sarah, as if she were a loathsome annoyance who had taken far more of his time than she deserved.

Regina was relaxing slightly. Yes, he'd thought this story would reassure her. A stranger coming to Storybrooke on her own was one thing, a stranger coerced by Mr. Gold was another.

"' _Force_ her to come'?" Regina repeated. "You make it sound like you held a gun to the poor woman's head."

The image flooded his mind. Holding a gun, holding it to Regina's head, and –

The Doctor pushed it away, trying to school his features to what he thought Mr. Gold would do. He flashed a wolfish grin. "Let's just say she took some convincing."

"It doesn't sound like there's much love lost between you."

That stung. Anger welled up in him, fierce and protective – and, with it, the knowledge that Regina  _must not_  be allowed to think Sarah could be used against him.

And that he wanted to kill Regina, wanted to kill her as much as he had ever wanted to save someone in his life –

_No, focus on Sarah. Protect her._

He snorted derisively. "That old stick?" he said, hoping Sarah would never know what he was saying – or that she would understand if she did. "I may not be as young as I used to be, Regina, but she's old enough to be my mother – and about as demanding, too. She's one of those relics who think a little intelligence and some specialized training makes her indispensable. I'm sure you'd get along wonderfully. The sooner she finishes her job the better."

There was a little disappointment in Regina's eyes – she  _had_  wanted something to use against him – but the remaining tension had bled away. Sarah Jane's presence was an oddity, but Regina was convinced it was a trivial one instead of a threat. "Where's she staying?"

"Unfortunately, I offered her the guest room at my house when I hired her. It's too late to make other arrangements today, but I mean to convince her Mrs. Lucas' bed and breakfast will suit her better tomorrow."

"I see. Will she be in town long then?"

"A couple of days, I think. Maybe three. Any longer, and I'll know she's just trying to pad my bill."

He sent her on her way, relieved to have gotten through without arousing any suspicions.

And there would have been suspicions, he thought.

Regina knew.

Exactly  _what_  she knew, he didn't know – but she knew it. She knew enough to recognize when the rules around Storybrooke seemed to be breaking – and came swooping in like a bad tempered dragon defending her hoard to protect them.

Pity he didn't know what she was protecting.

But . . . he knew what he had felt.

Gold's anger – Gold's  _loathing_  for the woman he had spoken to, a woman  _he_  had never met before.

X

Granny’s, it turned out, was run by the grandmother the young woman with the red hair streaks had mentioned. The young woman, whose name was Ruby, worked there as a waitress. She wore next to nothing, put on makeup with a trowel, and flirted outrageously with every man in the place, except Dr. Whale.

Sarah, who was trying to get a feel for the community, found it odd at first. Girls who radiated cheap and easy didn't normally give the cold shoulder to doctors—the medical kind, not Time Lord sort—without reason – and Dr. Whale really was a doctor as well as being one of the directors of the local hospital— nor did Ruby seem to have any history with him or other reason to dislike him.

But, after a little observation, Sarah thought she understood. Ruby flirted with the men (who all left generous tips) but she managed to laugh and put off any requests for more  _personal_  dealings – except when her grandmother was listening. When that happened, Ruby's flirting went into overdrive and there was nothing a man could suggest that she wouldn't at least listen to.

Except Dr. Whale, who (Sarah guessed) was a bit more serious about it than the other men Ruby teased and joked with – or who wouldn't know to back off gracefully if Ruby changed her mind.

Ruby might be a flirt, but it looked like her real interest was in rebelling against Grandma.

But, even if everything she did to rein in her granddaughter was only making things worse, Sarah had a few guesses why Granny acted the way she did. Ruby's mother was dead, and there was no mention of a father. That was probably enough to turn any grandmother into an overly strict control freak who didn't know when to let go.

Assuming Granny and Ruby weren't invading aliens and all this wasn't just a cover before they lured travelers into the back and cooked them for dinner.

It wasn't like Sarah hadn't dealt with that before.

She ordered a salad.

"So," Ruby said, bringing out the food. "You know Gold?"

"Unfortunately," Sarah said. She tried to look nervous. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that. He's one of your neighbors, isn't he? I'm just finding him a bit difficult to work with."

"Don't worry. There's nothing you can say about Gold that everyone else hasn't said before you. You're working for him?"

Sarah nodded. "I'm a journalist. I did a few articles on antiquities Mr. Gold read and he thought I could help him with some research on pieces he'd collected."

"A journalist?" Ruby's eyes glowed. "You travel a lot?"

Ruby began to pump Sarah for the places she'd seen, London, Paris, Boston – Ruby spoke of Boston in the hushed, reverent tones of a pilgrim searching for the Promised Land. Sarah was careful, of course, only to mention places on Earth and tried to stick with ones she'd seen in the twentieth or twenty-first centuries, the famous ones that tourists loved.

Though she did find herself mentioning the village her Aunt Lavinia had lived in. "Amazing place," Sarah said, thinking of the witch coven that had attacked her there. "People in small towns have so many secrets outsiders never suspect."

Ruby laughed. "Secrets nobody cares about. Trust me, I know everything that happens in Storybrooke, and none of it's worth knowing."

"Everything?" Sarah asked. "Any dirt on Mr. Gold?"

"Oh, Mr. Gold doesn't have any secrets. He's a mean, old, skinflint and he doesn't care who knows it. No, I take it back. Nobody knows where the bodies are buried but we all know there must be some. We also don't know how he manages to keep walking around when it's clear he ripped his heart out and hocked it years ago."

"What's this about bodies and hearts?" a man with a lilting, Irish brogue said, sitting down at the counter by Sarah. He was a young, bearded man – and he wore the sheriff's badge.

Odd, Sarah thought. There were plenty of Irish immigrants to America – and had been for hundreds of years. But, they didn't usually wind up in small towns somewhere in the backwoods of New England.

And the few sheriffs she'd met had all been older. Much older.

"We're just discussing Mr. Gold," Ruby said. "Ms. Smith, this is Sheriff Graham. Graham, this is Ms. Smith. Be nice to her. She's already had to put up with Gold all day and she may not be able to take much more."

"Hard day?" Graham asked.

"A little," Sarah said. "I'm helping Mr. Gold with some research. He's rather exacting."

"Sounds like him. You're from England, by the sound of it. Did he drag you all the way over from there?"

Sarah shook her head. "I'm a journalist. I was covering a story in Boston when Mr. Gold contacted me. He was very insistent that I come up here to help him. And what about you, where are you from?"

"Ireland originally, but I tend to think of Storybrooke as home."

"What brought you here?"

He shrugged. "The city never really worked for me. I had a girlfriend who used to say I was raised by wolves. I wanted to live in a small town – and Storybrooke gets to you after a while."

They chatted a bit more.

But, though, Sarah asked various questions, and Sheriff Graham seemed to answer them all honestly and frankly, she never found out what part of Ireland he'd lived in or any reasons why he'd left – or why Storybrooke was the place he'd chosen even before it "got" to him.

She sized up several of the other locals. Looking for aliens, she found herself looking for physical oddities.

There were a few men who were all short and very stocky, powerfully built.  Not inhumanly, so.  But, there was something not quite right about them.

Perhaps even more oddly, even though they were different races, there was something about them that her wonder if they were related, even though they seemed to have nothing to do with each other.

One was another doctor from the hospital (and how many doctors did a town this size really need? How did a town where no one changed and no one died even manage to keep a hospital running?). She heard him talk briefly to Dr. Whale. Another ran a small store down the street and had a bad case of hay fever. The third was the town drunk, a man named Leroy. He must be the one the sheriff kept locking up. He was a cranky, grumpy man who managed to insult three people for no reason before stomping out. He didn't leave a tip.

She also saw some of the nuns. They had a convent nearby, she was told. But –

Sarah found herself staring.

All the nuns she saw were about the same age.

All young.

All pretty.

Not typical nuns at all. The median age was getting older and older. Even if they were inclined to join, young women tended to take a good look around the world first.

The nuns had modern, modified habits – conservative and uniform, but without the wimples or long dresses that had typified nuns before reforms began back in the sixties.

She wasn't familiar with the Order of St. Melissa, and, when she asked, nobody even seemed certain if they were Catholic or Orthodox or Church of England or what.

She went back and told the Doctor what she'd learned – or hadn't learned.

"St. Melissa," he mused. "I don't remember that one. Of course, it might make sense if they were fairies instead of nuns."

"If they were what?"

"That was just a quip," he said quickly. "Not serious. But, if you'd ever read  _Orlando Furiouso_ –wonderful book from the sixteenth century, I had the author autograph my copy – Melissa was a sort of prototype fairy godmother. And the name does mean honey bee, which would fit."

"They were nuns, Doctor. There were no wings or magic wands in sight."

"No, no, of course not. And you saw three, stocky men, the grumpy one, the sneezy one, and the doctor one. I don't suppose you noticed if there were any others?"

Sarah gave him a severe look. "No, Doctor, no one bashful, or sleepy, or dopey, or happy."

"Really? No one happy? In the whole town? That does present a problem."

"Doctor . . . ."

"Yes, yes, sorry. I'll try to be a bit more serious. Regina came by and questioned me, by the way. Wanted to know who you were and why you were here. I think that woman knows more about what's going on around here than she lets on."

 


	2. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A summary of what should have happened before the end.

When I wrote this story, I had the beginning and the end. Usually, when that happens, the middle takes care of itself as I set down to writing. This time, it didn’t.

What I know about the middle is this:

The Doctor and Sarah, acting together and separately, would have stumbled around Storybrooke and begun to realize something was very wrong with this place. There would have been running up and down corridors and a couple cliffhanger endings (because Dr. Who) before leading into the final part.

Two weird things would have been going on with the Doctor. He would have found himself acting more and more out of character. I know there would have been a part where he would pull a gun on someone (probably someone threatening Sarah) and been perfectly willing to shoot if that person didn’t back down –and maybe even if they did (if that had happened, I’m sure Sarah would have stopped him).

Through all this, he would have been having pains in his leg. It would start off as a twinge now and then, gradually becoming worse and more frequent. After the gun incident, he would have collapsed as his leg gave way and he found he had the same, crippling injury as Mr. Gold.

This would all lead up to the final chapter.

Except, well, what can I say? I never got the middle part going.    

So, this is me officially giving up and going straight to the conclusion.


	3. The Clock Strikes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Doctor learns the truth--about everything.

Sarah was coming down the stairs in the bed and breakfast when she saw the Doctor walking in to collect the rent – and find out what he could about the town’s latest, mysterious visitor.

She was ready for him to do something ridiculous and wondered how much she would have to help him out – when she saw him freeze as the blond woman gave her name to Granny as she handed her the key to her room.

Sarah remembered when the Doctor had regenerated, the moments when old habits and a new self coexisted uneasily.

This was the same face, but –

Something had changed.

“Emma,” the Doctor said. “What a beautiful name.” 

He barely seemed to notice as Granny, looking as frightened as if he had horns and breathed sulfur, handed over the rent.  Then, he beat a hasty retreat.

Sarah hurried outside.  He hadn’t waited for her.

She found him at the house, sitting in the dark parlor, staring at nothing.  The curtains were drawn.

“Doctor?”

He didn’t react at first.  When he did, it was to look over at her, perplexed, as if he hadn’t realized she was talking to him.

For a moment, she thought he didn’t even know who she was.

Then, something seemed to click.

“Sarah,” he said.

There was no particular warmth in his voice, just the quickly donned pleasantness of a businessman who has put a name to a face in his store.

“Doctor, what happened?  Who – who was that woman?”

“Her?  Oh, Emma Swan.” He frowned, thinking over ramifications and complications only he could see (she knew that look) before remembering she was there and explaining.  “She was born twenty-eight years ago.  The day the town appeared.  News reports – news reports will tell you she was found at the diner outside Storybrooke.  The one people usually have the sense to stop at rather than come here.”

“She’s from the town, then?  Originally?”

“Oh, no.  She’s never been here before.

“But, she’s from the same world the rest of them are.  She – she would have come here just before the rest of them, the child who can break the curse . . . .”

“The what?  Doctor, you’re not making any sense.”

“Ah.  There’s a reason for that.  I finally . . . I know what’s happening here.  I know what happened to Mr. Gold.  I know . . . everything.”

He was frightening her, but she forced her voice to sound light.  “Care to share?”

“Of course, of course, you deserve to –” He stopped suddenly and looked at her – _really_ looked at her.  The intensity in his eyes frightened her almost as much as his previous blankness had.

He stood up and gathered her into his arms.

And kissed her.

She had imagined being kissed by the Doctor – had imagined it many, many times over the years she’d known him – and that was all it had ever been, imaginings.  She had told herself, again and again, she was too old for foolish, schoolgirl fantasies.  Whatever she and the Doctor were to each other – and she knew she was more than just a traveling companion or even just a very good friend – she knew he was centuries old and that there were some lines he could never bring himself to cross with someone he knew, no matter what he did, he was destined to lose.

Her schoolgirl fantasies, she decided, had not covered the half of it.

Finally, he moved away a little, and she was able to catch her breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

 _Not_ the first thing a girl wanted to hear from the man who’d been kissing her.

“I’m sorry it took so long. I’m sorry it took till now – when I have to tell you.”

“Tell me?” Sarah asked.

He kissed her again instead of answering.  Somehow, he wound up pulling her down into the winged chair.  She was sitting on his lap with his hands running through her hair.  For a few moments, she thought the conversation – and his cryptic comments – were about to be forgotten.

He pulled himself away again.  “I’m sorry, Sarah.  I want – it doesn’t matter.  You’re not – you’re not going to want anything to do with me.  Not once you know.”

“Doctor, what are you saying?” There was something about this place, she decided, that rotted people’s brains out.  Even the Doctor was susceptible if he could say that to her.  “You’re not making any sense.  Know what?”

He looked at her as though he were trying to memorize her face, as though he expected never to see her again.  Then, gently, he pushed her away, out of his lap.  She sat in the chair next to his, still holding onto his hand, afraid what would happen if she let go.  “Doctor, you’re frightening me.  What is it?  What’s happened?”

“Frightening you,” he repeated.  His mouth twisted into a bitter smile.  “Yes, that’s what I do, isn’t it?  Frighten people.”

“Doctor . . . .”

“I told you about the trick Time Lords have, the way we can hide ourselves – I told you how I did it, once, became a human, a school teacher back in the Edwardian era.  And how the Master hid himself that way, too.  After the Time War.  At the end of time.”

“Yes . . . .”

“You could say that’s what Storybrooke is, an entire town hidden behind false memories.  Hidden for a reason.

“There are other worlds, other universes, where the laws of physics as you know them don’t apply, where what you would call magic is as simple as action and reaction, universal laws everyone knows and everyone takes for granted.  You know, Newton wasn’t brilliant for _seeing_ the laws of motion – everyone sees those, every day – he was brilliant stopping and saying, ‘Hey, this _means_ something.’ Then figuring out what it meant.”

“But, one of those other worlds, that’s where Regina – and the rest of this town – come from.  The stories you know, the ones you learn as children of princesses and dragons, they’re rooted in that world, the heart of its reality.

“Regina – Regina is what you would call a witch, a wicked queen.  This town is her curse, the people she hates are trapped here in a reality she created in a world where the magic they need to break the curse doesn’t exist.

“And Gold – Gold is a wizard.  No, more than a wizard – an imp, a demon, an evil being who helped her create the curse.  He’s – as old as I am.” His mouth twisted as he said it, as if the words were a sour joke.  “And cleverer,” he said.  His eyes darkened.  “Much cleverer.”

“Your coming here – this was a trap?  Something Gold set up?”

He smiled painfully.  “A trap, yes, but not the way you’re thinking.

“Gold helped her create this place for reasons of his own.  But, he knew he’d be caught as well, given a false life, false memories, and _nothing to do_ but wait twenty-eight years for the child who’d escaped the curse, the child who’s the key to ending it.”

“Emma Swan.”

“Yes.

“You don’t need to worry about that.  It will take care of itself now she’s here.  I’ll – I’ll take you home – you’ll have to let me do that, Sarah.  Even if you don’t want to ever see me again, I did promise to see you safe home – and I always keep my deals.”

“Doctor –”

“Right.  Let me finish.

“Gold knew.  Or the creature Gold was in that universe.  And he expected to be bored and restless and didn’t care for the idea of sitting around for _twenty-eight years_ with nothing to do but collect rents and scare townspeople.

“Have you ever considered how . . . odd your world is, Sarah?  The Loch Ness Monster has stormed through London, and no one seems to remember.  Aliens crash in the Thames, and life goes on as normal.  The Daleks are defeated, destroyed, and then they return.  Again and again and again.  And the universe goes on, unchanged.  There’s no real logic to that, is there?”

Sarah tried to fight down the fear bubbling up inside her.  “You’ve said it yourself, Doctor.  People don’t like to believe the impossible.  It’s easier to forget those things and act as if they never happened than to wake up and realize you’re living in a world where nothing is what you thought it was.”

Bitter humor twisted his face again.  “Oh, yes.  That’s true enough.

“Sarah, our – _your­_ universe exists because Gold wanted it to.  It’s like this town, little pieces sewn together from another world – or worlds, in your case.  Leftovers.  Things their own worlds didn’t need, intersecting with this one as necessary.  Even then, most of the beings there are just illusions, little bits of stage dressing filling in the corners.  Memories.  Echoes.

“A few – perhaps a few dozen, maybe even a few hundred in all the centuries and worlds we’ve seen – are real,  bits and pieces scavenged from other worlds, other dreams, other realities.  They exist and breathe and walk and live within the bounds that world has set for them, until its mad little rules find a need for them.”

“That’s – that’s insane, Doctor.  The world is _real_ it –”

He cut through what she was saying.  “ _You’re_ real.  And Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart was real.  And a handful of others were.  Some of the things we fought were real.  Some of Daleks.  A handful.  The same with the Cybermen and all the rest.  Some were . . . people.  Or had been.

“And the rest weren’t. 

“Stage dressing.  Nothing more. 

“You remember the Trickster?  How he created a reality where you died instead of your friend?

“My guess is that’s what really happened.  Whatever timeline, whatever reality you originally belonged to, you died – or you were supposed to die.  So, that world – the world you think of as yours – could pluck you out without changing the real world. It found a place for you and sucked you in.

“The Trickster, he’s not the demon you thought he was.  He’s just part of that world’s self-regulation, a mechanism to provide a bit of extra stitching on the world’s frayed corners, disguising itself as a nightmare while it does its work.  It sets the Daleks to play over and over again.  It resets the game after London’s been destroyed by monsters, fixing it up and letting people forget.

“And, when things are too slow and it has nothing else to do, it steps in as one of the monsters.

“I told you once, didn’t I? About the dangers of traveling from universe to universe – and even those other universes I’ve seen, what were they except reflections of the one you know with just a few, minor changes for variation?  A little pocket of space off of the main stage, that’s all.

“That was the real danger, the danger I was supposed to avoid, the danger I wasn’t even supposed to see.  Step too far out of your world – or the little pocket worlds sewn onto it – and you might realize what it is.

“And, then, there’s me.  Last of the Time Lords.  Last of a race no one else remembers – except at odd, very convenient moments.  A people _no one ever saw._   The most powerful beings in existence who left no signs of their existence.  I try to remember how many I’ve even spoken to over the millennium I’ve been alive.  A dozen?  Two dozen?

“And, Sarah, this is _me_.  I can tell you how many stars there are in your galaxy and how many planets each one has spinning round it – but all I can remember of my people is I’ve spoken to _maybe_ a couple dozen of them.  More or less.  I can’t give you an exact number.  Does that make sense to you?

“Your world existed because – because Gold – he didn’t _plan_ it, Sarah.  It wasn’t – it wasn’t malice or a sick joke or anything cruel – you _have_ to believe that – because he helped make the curse.  And the curse made people twisted reflections of what they were in the world they came from.  Mostly in ways that hurt them.

“But, Gold had some power over the curse.  Not much.  But a little.  Enough.  Gold . . . he would never admit it, not to anyone here, but, deep in his heart . . . he’s a monster.  But, he always wanted to be the hero.

“When the curse was cast, Storybrooke didn’t need that part of him.  It was spun off and set in a corner.   It’s the same way this town was woven out of its world and parts of this one.

“This town is larger than it seems, Sarah, and there are more people – _real_ people in Storybrooke than there are in the entire universe you’ve seen back home.”

Sarah shook her head.  “That’s – that’s not possible.  If my world’s not real, then what about you?  Where do you fit in?” she asked even though she already understood the answer.

“I once made myself into a human man, a teacher at a boys school, with all the extra bits stuffed into a watch.  Gold made himself a human man, and most of the real things just slept.  But, the rest . . . .”  He looked at Sarah and cupped her cheek in his hand.  She saw the pain in his eyes, the pain of knowing he was about to lose her.

No.  She was imagining things.  The Doctor always complained about how humans never saw the obvious – or saw it and put it together in all the wrong ways.  The things she was thinking – the things she thought he was hinting at – she would see she had it all wrong, all back to front.  As usual.

“He loved a woman once.  She had hair about the color as yours.  And your fire and independence.  She was even about your height.  I wonder if whatever he made went on its own to look for someone like you . . . . I should be grateful for that, that the curse saved you and let me find you, even if I wasted it . . . .

“He left me that, at least, whatever he kept for himself.  The ability to love.  A little. 

“Not enough.  Not enough to walk away from the story he’d written for me, to stay with you and love you . . . . He was a coward, you know.  He ran away from love when he had the chance.  I suppose I did the same.

“But, even now, with all these memories crowding in, I remember I could have loved you . . . .”

No.

_No._

He wasn’t saying – he couldn’t be saying –

“Who are you?”

He wasn’t letting his story be hurried.  Maybe because he knew how it would end.

“I told you I could regenerate twelve times, thirteen incarnations.  Gold’s magic is dark and evil, Sarah, and I suppose the number appealed to him.  Thirteen times.  I could wear different faces of the hero thirteen times.

“And, then, the last time, I would wear his face.  And it would be time to come home.

“That’s why he vanished from the town.  We had already merged back together – truly merged.  I’ve done things since we came here . . . things you know weren’t like – like the me you’ve known.

“The Doctor would never take a gun and shoot another being with it.  I would.  I have.  Centuries before Storybrooke existed, I did things . . . I’ve killed men slowly and painfully.  I killed a woman – she was barely more than a girl – because she _might_ have heard a secret.  She couldn’t even speak, but her life was worth less to me than the risk she might pass it on.  I destroy people.

“Even the Doctor – he’s part of me, Sarah.  I could almost wish he was the only part. 

“But, he’s not. 

“And he’s the weakest part.  The good you saw in him was because I cut it loose to be on its own – and because, for me, it wasn’t a risk.  If he died, he died – but I lived.  The dark part of me that’s always been stronger.

“And, even he wasn’t good enough – or brave enough – to love you instead of hurting you. 

“If I have to choose between being him and getting what I want, he loses.  He’s _lost._  Because, I’m standing here right now knowing I have the choice – and I choose not to be him.  I’m not the Doctor.

“I’m Mr. Gold.”

o0o0o0o

The Tardis was no longer a huge box, bigger on the inside than the outside.  Those parts of it had gone back where they belonged, into his house (there was a reason scrolls from Alexandria were in his library, marked with his handwriting; and a reason a Mona Lisa no one but he knew existed hung in a guest room).  The Tardis, now, was only what it had always been, a doorway in his home, a place between here and there.

He led her through it, stepping into her home.

The Trickster, true to his purpose, was waiting for him – waiting for them both.

Sarah stiffened.  But, for a moment, she felt a mad hope. 

“Doctor, you’re wrong, don’t you see?  The Trickster’s done something, changed your memories, played tricks with your mind –”

The Doctor looked at her sadly and shook her head.  “No, Sarah, he hasn’t.”

The Trickster bowed.  “My lord?”

The Doctor gently touched her face one more time, his fingers brushing against her hair.  “Goodbye, Sarah.  I’m sorry.”  He turned to the Trickster.  “Make her sleep.”

Gold caught Sarah and helped lower her onto the couch.

“Her children?” he asked the Trickster.

“At school, my lord.”

Gold nodded.  “You must change her memories and theirs.  Do nothing to harm them or anyone they care about, but you will rewrite her past.

“The Doctor loved her,” he said quietly.  “That is what she must remember.  His fourth incarnation . . . .” He traced the line of Sarah’s jaw, considering.  The third incarnation had been too old.  Yes, begin with the fourth.  “He admitted he loved her.” He smiled sadly, thinking of the story he was making for her, a story of the things he hadn’t done.  “He married her.  Though he left her behind in the safety of Earth, he always returned for her – and, through her whole life, he took her for adventures.” Yes, allow for his travels with the other companions without reworking their lives.

Or, he thought, without rewriting them out of existence.

“You understand, this is not to harm any of the others I travelled with,” he said severely. “Or alter them or the lives they’ve made.  Except when they need to remember Sarah.

“I returned to her, always.  She was happy even when I couldn’t be with her.  Luke, Sky, they think of me as their father, despite my absences.  They know they are loved.”

“Rose,” the Trickster said.

Oh, yes, Rose, who had travelled with the Doctor and who Sarah had been jealous of.  Because, she had what Sarah wanted, time spent with the Doctor.

He had come dangerously close to loving her as well.

Rose, named for Belle’s favorite flower, with eyes blue as gems.

Blue as Belle’s.

“I thought of Rose as a daughter, though she had a crush on me.  I hadn’t seen it, not till Sarah made me that time she met her.  I couldn’t bring myself to disillusion Rose and tell her the truth.  She’d saved her father only to see him die again because I let her touch that time.  She’d given up so much for me.”  Or that was the story Sarah would believe, even if she may have been angry because of it, even if she would have been more glad than she should have been when he finally found a world for Rose where both her father and her mother could exist—a world without him. 

He thought of the human created in another bit of the Trickster’s tidying, a human with the face and many of the memories of one of his past lives.

One of the not-real people of this universe, a bit of illusion, a bit of echoes bound together.

“The human Doctor I sent to Rose . . . his memories had to be simplified, changed to fit a human form.  Leave him as he is, but the _reason_ , within the context of this world, is that the Tardis matrix changed his memories to ones he could live with and, when it did that, it used some of Rose’s memories, as it had absorbed them over her time with me.  They provided a blueprint, an outline for him as a human.  Because that’s how she saw me.  She understood me in terms of her own kind.  That was the basic form used to fit the restructuring of his mind – and it included her belief that he loved her.

“And I was content to let him love her, to give him a life in that world.

“With that restructuring, he didn’t remember loving Sarah.  It’s an easy enough lie, isn’t it?”

He leaned down and kissed Sarah, chastely, on the forehead.  Then got up to leave.

“You will not return?” the Trickster asked.

“Unlikely.  Protect her.  Protect all of them, the real ones, in this little dream world.”

“She will wonder why you don’t return.  She will think you are dead.”

True enough.  He closed his eyes.  “Let her believe . . . restructure her memory . . . . No, don’t restructure it beyond what I’ve already authorized.  Create an illusion, a seeming of me.  He will visit her till – till she dies.  I want her to live a long, good life.  You understand?  You will see to this.

“When . . . when she dies, Luke and Sky are to believe he was nearing the end of his final regeneration.  He’ll leave and just not return . . . . No.” No, Luke and Sky were real.  They deserved better than what he had done to Sarah, letting her gaze up at the stars for decades, not knowing if he had lived or died.  “They will know he was old, even for one of his kind.  They will know he was holding on through the end of his time for Sarah.  They will not be surprised when he lets go after losing her.  According to your judgment, whichever solution will best reconcile them to his death, he can either die peacefully in his sleep at their home, the weight of his years finally catching up with him, or on some last adventure, saving everything.

“Leave them a body to bury.  There should be nothing horrible about it to hurt their last memories of him, no injuries too terrible for them to see.  And you’ll look after them.”  He looked at Sarah, sleeping so peacefully.

“Look after her,” he said.  “That’s all.”

And he left through the archway that had been the Tardis, closing the door behind him.


End file.
